and who were the Mittani? Vedic Indians. There is even an Arabian line that is starting to show the curved ears of the Marwari. .. Allow me a flight of fancy, but I have always imagined the first person to ride a horse was a 16 year old girl.

Haha, your flight of fancy. Mawari .. That is my homeland, horses with curved ears. I think they have a better sense of sound direction, their ears keep turning in all directions. It was interesting to watch their ears. Let us put it more correctly - Mittani were from the same group of IE people which came to India with Vedas.

Vijendra Kashyap, director of India's National Institute of Biologicals in Noida, India says the only gene that is proven as western is j2. He says the language is western. j2 is first found in sopot/lengyel who lived on the pelagos that filled central europe.. so they were pelasgians.

There are 70+ mare lines. D is the Nisean horse of Persia. C is Celtic. A is the 66 chromosome horse of which on the Przewalski remains(A2). If you are familiar with the domestication event of the fox, breeding tame to tame actually caused the mutation that created the domestic fox. Something similar happened with the horse Even though horses in A family (excluding A2) are 64 chromosome horses, the foundation mares were 66. The Portuguese Sorraia is the domestic horse most closely related to the Przewalski horse. It is labeled JSO4. Except for one pesky Andalusian line and an interesting mustang/Japanese horse connection all horses clearly show they were imported to Europe.

The Arabian is a man made breed created at Crabbet stud. The first horses in Arabia came from Rome. Dr. Cothran at U Tx did a dna test that showed the Arab is descended from the Marwari. The Egyptians got horses from the Mittani, and who were the Mittani? Vedic Indians. There is even an Arabian line that is starting to show the curved ears of the Marwari.

And absolutely horses were kept for food before they were kept for anything else. People in Central Asia still milk mares. Allow me a flight of fancy, but I have always imagined the first person to ride a horse was a 16 year old girl.

Just to add to this excellent info.

The above shows where the horse formed part of the diet. The Pontic Steppe clearly is the area where the population had most intimate contact with the horse and moreover this is Equus caballerus, the modern horse.

The fact that all stallions alive to today are descended from just one horse (or a very, very small number) whilst the the matriarchal line comes from many females can be explained by the group behaviour of the horse in the wild.

A Stallion will keep a harem of mares but within the harem there is a lead mare and as herders found, control the lead mare and you control the herd. Moreover mares are very compliant creatures which makes them ease for domestication. On the other hand left to themselves Stallions form bands of aggressive, violent nasty individuals, very difficult to control.

When domesticated (about 5000BCE) Stallions were eaten as soon as they achieved maturity (about 2 years) whilst mares were allowed to continue to breed (about 10 year old) until no longer useful. Clearly a stallion which is more compliant and less aggressive than this brothers will be left alive to breed. Hence we have selection of the male line only, resulting in a very narrow spread of the male Y Chromosome gene in the modern horse.

The Steppe favours the horse as a source of meat over the the cow, pig or sheep. In the winter the horse will continue to feed in the winter using its head and hooves to move the snow and produces high quality protein meat.

It is not necessary to coral the horse. As the Red Indians showed, simply hobbling by tying the two front hooves together limits it movement but enables it to continue to feed, all in all a relatively easy animal to manage in the vast expanse of the Steppe.

It is very difficult to identify when the horse was first ridden. Looking at wear in the backbone has not been successful and use of nose rings or halters does not show in the archaeological record. However the horse-bit, which is the most effective way of controlling the horse, pulls on the back molars in the horse's head and wear on these teeth gives proof that the horse is now being ridden.

The horses of the Botai culture of Kazakhstan (about 3800BCE) are the first to show this trait. So whilst not proof that these were the first riders, they appear to be the first using modern method of horse control, the mouth bit.

AFAIK the yin-yang symbol only became culturally significant during the late Warring States period, so there's a massive missing link (possibly multiple links) that needs to be procured to support this theory. The swastika is a simple geometric shape that any artisan can create, present in cultures clearly not linked to the Eurasian continent.

Early Chinese motifs looked like this:

Just because someone occurred before something else does not indicate derivation, and the subject of the introduction of metallurgy to China is contentious in itself.

All I can say is that I wonder what other animals people tried riding before giving horses a shot. Sheep? Cows? Tigers?

The first person to ever ride a horse must have looked a little ridiculous.

Anyway, I think it is interesting how Indo-Europeans headed up their pantheon with a skygod - roughly "Dyeus Pater" which was passed down through Indo-European culture, surviving still in India - and that the Tengrism of Huns, Mongols, and Turkic peoples also headed up their pantheon with a sky god. This is interesting because the supposed ancestral location of the Proto-Indo-European culture is on the plains.

Reindeer? Some one said it must have been a woman because they would be milking the mares.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Theodoric

Anyway, I think it is interesting how Indo-Europeans headed up their pantheon with a skygod - roughly "Dyeus Pater" which was passed down through Indo-European culture, surviving still in India ..

Heaven and Earth (Dyava-Prithavi):

1. THESE, Heaven and Earth, bestow prosperity on all, sustainers of the region, Holy Ones and wise,
Two Bowls of noble kind: between these Goddesses the God, the fulgent Sun, travels by fixed decree.
2 Widely-capacious Pair, mighty, that never fail, the Father and the Mother keep all creatures safe:
The two world-halves, the spirited, the beautiful, because the Father hath clothed them in goodly forms.
3 Son of these Parents, he the Priest with power to cleanse, Sage, sanctifies the worlds with his surpassing power.
Thereto for his bright milk he milked through all the days the partly-colored Cow and the prolific Bull.
4 Among the skilful Gods most skilled is he, who made the two world-halves which bring prosperity to all;
Who with great wisdom measured both the regions out, and established them with pillars that shall ne’er decay.
5 Extolled in song, O Heaven and Earth, bestow on us, ye mighty Pair, great glory and high lordly sway,
Whereby we may extend ourselves ever over the folk; and send us strength that shall deserve the praise of men.
RigVeda, Book I, Hymn 160 (http://sacred-texts.com/hin/rigveda/rv01160.htm)

How about looking opening up a indoeuropean dictionary and have a look what word they used for ancestors, hero? Usually nations know who they came from, they celebrated and preserved their ancestry. The mongols do, the Chinese do, the Abrahamic traditions do....

IMHO, 'our fathers'. Vedas do not have many human warrior figures. The hymn singers, the fire priests were more important - The Atharvan and the Angirasa families. The heroic work was done by Gods - Indra, Agni, Soma, Ashwins, Mitra, Vishnu, Varuna, etc. These priests are addressed as 'our fathers'.